About

Participants engage with each other at the convening on Multisectoral Action to Address the Social Determinants of Health (November 2015)

Vision

Our vision is to empower people and institutions to leverage knowledge and skills around the benefits, challenges, and opportunities of diversity in order to create a truly equitable and inclusive society.

Mission

To create a more equitable and inclusive society, we produce, catalyze, and elevate diversity research and scholarship. In this pursuit, we also build intergenerational communities of scholars and leaders to integrate these evidence-based approaches in addressing contemporary issues in a diverse society.

Values

Excellence

We cannot have excellence without diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We seek to build programs and approaches that are models for others through the pursuit of best practices and scholarly/research queries, while building on the existing literature.

We value and support cutting-edge and innovative diversity research and scholarship in the application to social issues.

We believe in the value of scholarly rigor

Collaboration & Engagement

We value formal and informal internal and external collaborations, with the understanding that diverse perspectives enhances the quality of our work, and with the expectation that our foundation is a catalyst for future programs, projects, and initiatives.

We strive for equity by seeking to create spaces where all have an equal seat at the table.

We have compassion in that we treat each situation with kindness and compassion by recognizing that no one is perfect, just that we should all try our best.

We believe in inclusion, so we ensure that all with whom we work not only feel included but are included.

(Self-)Reflection

We seek to be humble in our pursuit of practices and research queries around issues of social justice, and understand that we do not have all the answers, but we know how to work together to get the answers.

We self-reflect and recognize our own power, privilege, and positionality as we approach our work and partnerships.

We understand that people operate under different frames and perspectives and have different motivations.

Learning & Teaching

We recognize that people come into contact with us at different stages in their education and world understanding.

We act as mentors to students, encouraging them to enrich the lives of others and to develop and we empower them as future leaders and critical thinkers.

We seek to demonstrate and build upon cutting edge rigorous research, supported by scholars from around the country.

Integrity

We explicitly name social issues and challenges, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to do so. We don’t mask the importance of an issue that impacts any of our communities in order to help others avoid guilt or feel better about it.

We give weight and value to the experienced history of discrimination in an effort to learn from past actions, including mistakes.

We conduct our work with the highest of ethical standards.

In scholarship and practice, we always seek to view individuals in their full humanity.

Courage

We support others who have the courage to speak their truths in all environments, and we use our positionality to affect positive outcomes of that courage.

We provide space, opportunity, and support for people to be courageous in numerous ways.

We acknowledge, promote, and build on the work and scholarship of those that have gone before us.

We encourage others to see that more "invisible" forms of activism (scholarly pursuits) are acts of courage.

We recognize the courage to develop innovative and critical theories, scholarship, programs, and practices, and networks that counter prevailing frameworks, narratives, and practices.